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Bridezillas: Seasons 1 and 2 (US - DVD R1)

Gabe Powers thinks of better ways to spend your hard earned money...

Feature

In this Weinstein Company produced series power-hungry brides obsess manically over the tiny details of their pending nuptials. When Murphy's Law takes its full effect, these women, who assume they’re entitled to being treated like princesses, snap and yell at the hard working people behind the scenes and their loved ones. Everyone is ostracized and the wedding itself does nothing to rectify the asinine behaviour.

The series may have been fun to watch in the ‘train wreck’ sense had it not been so utterly boring, including one of the most detached and sheepish narrators I've ever heard. It's almost as if he's afraid that one of the brides may hear him. Had the producers set up events, or even had some kind of competition between the brides, I might've cared, but as it stands watching this series is about as exciting as watching slightly loopy, well-to-do women feel sorry for themselves, which it is. What we need here is some intervention from a few Japanese producers. Make the Bridzillas fight each other dressed up as the movie monsters they're named after. The winner gets a standard wedding cake; the loser has to make her own out of ground beef.

And with that I'm pretty much done with my analysis of the WE channels hit series, Bridezillas, seasons one and two. All 700 minutes of it. Since I've finished quicker than usual, I'll take this opportunity to supply my readers with a few fun facts about marriage in America.

In May of 2005, a new survey placed the average cost of a wedding at $26,327. A total of $125 billion—about the size of Ireland's GDP—will be spent on 2.1 million weddings in 2005, according to the ‘American Weddings’ study conducted by the Fairchild Bridal Group. Fairchild surveyed more than 1,000 brides (states CNNmoney.com). On the flip side, the U.S. has the third highest divorce rate in the world. Roughly half of American marriages end in divorce, and the average cost of a divorce is about $20,000 (according to Bankrate.com), a $28 billion-a-year industry. 43.7 percent of custodial mothers and 56.2 percent of custodial fathers are divorced or separated. In 2002, 7.8 million payers had paid $40 billion in support arrangements.

The average cost of an engagement ring (usually diamond) is between $2,000 and $3,000. That's roughly four billion dollars spent last year in the United States alone. Rings make up 79 % of diamond jewellery sales worldwide, although the major market is the USA (cnn.com). In African countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, the profits from unregulated diamond trade are used to obtain weapons and fund armed conflicts. As a result, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, raped, mutilated or abducted, according to Amnesty International. From 1991 to 1999 Sierra Leone reported 50,000 dead, one million displaced. Numbers in Liberia and the Congo are even grimmer. The world diamond jewellery retail market was worth US $56 billion in 1999. De Beers, the world's leading diamond mining company that controls 70% of global diamond supply, is based in South Africa.

America's official poverty rate rose from 12.5% in 2003 to 12.7% in 2004, according to the US Census Bureau. World wide, 852 million people are hungry, up from 842 million a year ago. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they ‘die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death’. That is about 210,000 children each week; or just under eleven million children under five years of age, each year.

Borgenproject.org states that the elimination of starvation and malnutrition globally would cost roughly $19 billion. Some call this figure too optimistic and price the cost closer to $24 billion. The organization also averages the cost of educating every child on earth at $12 billion, and supplying sanitation and water at $15 billion.

Video

Bridezillas is shot on location and doesn't appear to use high definition cameras, because of this the image can often appear washed out and/or grainy. This is not the fault of the DVD, but of the trials of not filming on a closed set. There seems to be a small issue with compression leading to some digital blocking and low level noise. Had it really mattered, these episodes could've been stretched across a third disc to avoid these problems. As it stands, each season is allocated two discs.

Audio

Bridezillas, surprisingly, may just be the best sounding disc on my shelf, blowing away the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies. The consistent whining, crying, and passive fit throwing rings bombastically from every speaker, and Hans Zimmer's epic score will shake you right off your couch, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘For Those About to Rock, We Salute You’. I am, of course, lying. The location sound, like the video, isn't the best, and being a television series the sound designers haven't really gone too far out of their way to make the series sound special. Again, any issues can most likely be blamed on the filming process.

Extras

Basically these sets come with no extras, but the box art would lead you to believe otherwise. Both seasons come with elongated ads for season three of the titular show, which I suppose would get me excited to set my Tivo to record if I had one, or had I not despised the show. We also get footage from the ‘Real Brides Cake Dive Event’, which is pretty lame, but more of what I would've wanted from the series.

Overall

The estimated budget of each season of Bridezillas is one million dollars, and the SRP of each season of the DVD is $26.99. I'm sure everyone who reads this review can think of a better way of spending this money, whether it is on everyday necessities like toilet paper, or charitable organizations like UNICEFF. If Bridezillas has taught me anything it's that marriage is expensive, stupid, and above all, not even slightly about love. View at your own risk, and Weinstein Company, I actually enjoy your Bravo network reality shows, next time send me one of them instead.